This exhibition at the Guggenheim Bilbao (22 October–27 February 2022) includes work by more than 100 women artists, making the case that the development of abstraction was far more multifaceted than the single-track story, with the (predominantly male) Ab-Ex movement at the apex, that has traditionally been presented in art history. The artists on view range from Georgiana Houghton, whose abstract spirit drawings in the mid 19th century predate Kandisky’s earliest abstractions by half a century, to Judy Chicago and other feminist artists in the 1980s; there is also a broad global perspective, incorporating work from Latin America, the Middle East and Asia. Find out more from the Guggenheim Bilbao’s website.
Preview below | View Apollo’s Art Diary here
Album of Spirit Art (1866–84), Georgiana Houghton. Courtesy the College of Psychic Studies, London
Méphisto (1958), Joan Mitchell. Photo: Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI/Jacques Faujour/Dist. RMN-GP; © Estate of Joan Mitchell
Fractional Module (1947–51), Saloua Raouda Choucair. © Saloua Raouda Choucair Foundation, Beirut/Galerie Saleh Barakat
Smoke Bodies, from Women in Smoke, Californi (1971–72), Judy Chicago. Courtesy the artist, Salon 94, New York, Through the Flower Archives, The Center for Art + Environment at the Nevada Museum of Art, and Artist Rights Society; © Judy Chicago, VEGAP, Bilbao, 2021